Baldwin

Palmyra, the trail stop the town grew from, had a harness shop, a blacksmith, a hotel, a lawyer, a drug store, two doctors and a tavern. Baker University began in 1858, when a group of Methodist ministers met at the Kibbee Cabin and founded it, and Palmyra bought land to the south for the school and a new town. The railroad came in 1867, when the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston laid the first Kansas tracks south of the Kansas River, and Baldwin City incorporated on September 22, 1870. A Santa Fe depot followed in 1906.

What the plaque says

Baldwin Here, and for the next 300 miles west, Highway 56 roughly follows the old Santa Fe trail, and frequently crosses it. White settlement began in this area in 1854, the year Kansas became a territory, and in 1855 the town of Palmyra was founded. When Baker University was established on the outskirts in 1858 a new town sprang up. It was named for John Baldwin, an Ohio capitalist who in 1857 hauled a steam sawmill in over the trail. By 1863 Palmyra had merged with Baldwin. Local settlers were "Free-State" in the fight over slavery; several were captured in a Proslavery raid of 1856. Among Free-State leaders was Dr. Andrew T. Still, founder of osteopathy, whose theory of healing was developed here. Baker University, named for Methodist Bishop Osmon Baker, is the state's oldest four-year college. It houses the famous Bishop Quayle Bible collection, and its first building, the "Old Castle," is now a museum.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Haskell Cultural Center and Museum — 12 mi
  Haskell Indian Nations University's own museum in Lawrence, built of cypress logs in 2002 to tell the truth about the federal boarding school the university grew out of.
• Watkins Museum of History — 14 mi
  Douglas County's free museum in J. B. Watkins's 1888 bank and mortgage building on Massachusetts Street, a red-brick fortune built on Kansas farm loans and given to the city by his widow.
• John Brown Museum State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The log cabin of Samuel and Florella Adair at Osawatomie, Oberlin-trained abolitionists whose home was an Underground Railroad station and the headquarters of Florella's half brother, John Brown.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Black Jack — 1.9 mi
• Overland Trails — 13 mi
• Lawrence — 14 mi
• Lawrence and the Old Trails — 17 mi